The Hadrian Memorandum

112

11:39 A.M.

“Control, this is 3-3. Copy?”

Immediately Irish Jack and Patrice perked up, their hands going to their earphones.

Conor White clicked on his microphone. “Go ahead, 3-3.”

“I’ve just been told our relatives have been located. The security director is coming to take me to them now.”

“Do you know how many there are?”

“The person who told me said only that ‘your people are here after all’ and that he was sorry for the delay.”

“Take the bait, 3-3. I repeat your instructions. You are a driver sent by Raisa Amaro. You were to meet them at the hospital and drive them to wherever they want to go. That’s all you know. Once you get them in the truck, take them directly to the construction site off Avenida Infante Dom Henrique. We’ll be right behind you. And take the earpiece out. We don’t want them wondering about it. Copy?”

“Roger. Copy.”

“6-4, did you read that? Copy.”

“Roger,” Branco’s voice came back. “We’re good to go.”

“6-2, did you read? Copy.”

“Roger, Control.” The gruff voice of the driver of Branco’s second car came back.

“Copy, 6-2.” White clicked off and glanced outside as the shadow of a cloud passed overhead. He studied it for a moment, mumbled something about rain, then reached down, opened his briefcase, and took out one of the two MP5 submachine guns. He checked its clip, then absently felt for the short-barrel SIG SAUER 9 mm semiautomatic tucked under his jacket at the small of his back. “Systems are go, gentlemen, load up,” he said quietly to Patrice and Irish Jack. “Systems are go.”

11:43 A.M.

Moses followed security director Gama down a hallway past a number of examination rooms. Two-thirds of the way down, Gama stopped and knocked on a door.

“Security,” Mário Gama said. The door opened, and Moses saw the people Conor White had described. Nicholas Marten, Anne Tidrow, and Congressman Ryder. What he didn’t see were the two RSO agents who were supposed to be guarding them. Immediately he tensed. It was too late. Gama shoved him inside. The door slammed closed behind him, and he found himself in the iron grip of the men he was looking for.

“Relax,” one of them said, and the other quickly frisked him for weapons. “Nothing.”

“What are you doing?” he pleaded in English. “I’m only doing what I was-”

“Oh, yeah?” the first man said.

In the next instant his laundryman’s jacket was stripped from him. They saw the wire on his left wrist running up to a small transmitter under his armpit. Instantly he jerked away, trying to push the KEY TO TALK button. Grant and Birns scrambled to get him. Marten got there first, grabbed his arm, and twisted it back. Moses cried out in pain.

“Get that damn thing off him!” Marten snapped.

Birns did, and then Grant shoved him back hard against the wall.

“Mário,” Marten said, and Gama stepped in with a pair of handcuffs.

“You are being detained in accordance with the antiterrorist laws and statutes of Portugal,” he said in English, then repeated in Portuguese. Immediately he raised a radio of his own and spoke into it. Within seconds the door opened, two uniformed hospital security guards came in, and Moses was taken from the room.

11:47 A.M.

Irish Jack shifted impatiently, his hands on the wheel, his eyes on the hospital’s front door. Two men came out and walked off down the sidewalk. A moment later a taxi pulled up behind the laundry truck, and a woman and a young girl wearing an eye patch got out and went into the building. Seconds passed and the taxi drove off. Then there was only the parked laundry truck with its emergency lights flashing as they had been from the beginning.

“Don’t like it, Colonel.”

“Neither do I,” White said.

“Control. This is 6-4. What’s the delay? Copy.” Branco’s voice spat through their earpieces.

“Control, 6-4. I’m giving Moses two minutes more. Nothing happens, we go in. Copy.”

“Roger, Control. We’re ready.”

“6-2, you copy?”

“6-2. Roger, Control.”

11:48 A.M.

The two groups were gathered in a hallway just off the reception area. Anne, Ryder, Birns, and Mário Gama, now in the white smock of an ambulance driver, were in the first. The other was made up of Marten, with the Glock automatic in his belt, wearing the earpiece and microphone from Moses’s team radio unit that would enable him to monitor White’s communications; the Joe Ryder look-alike, Agent Grant; and the impersonators of Anne, Birns, and the just-apprehended laundry truck driver, Moses. A female bookkeeper wore Anne’s bucket hat pulled down over her ears; an anesthesiologist who more or less resembled Birns wore his tan sport coat; and Santos Gama, Mário’s brother, who was a real-life ambulance driver and to some degree resembled Moses physically, had on the laundryman’s jacket. Moments earlier he had put on a deep-bronzing makeup, courtesy of a male nurse, that darkened his facial complexion enough so that, from a distance at least, his skin color took on something of the Algerian’s. It was he who would drive the truck.

“Everyone ready?” Marten asked. There was a murmur and unanimous nod. Then he looked at Anne.

“Good luck,” she said.

“You, too.”

“Good luck to us all,” Ryder added and looked to the people around him. “And a very indebted and heartfelt thank-you to Mário, to his brother Santos, and to his friends for helping us in what we all realize is a particularly dangerous situation.” He looked at Marten and nodded.

“Let’s go,” Marten said, and they parted: Anne, Ryder, Birns, and Gama down the corridor to the left and the ambulance bay; Marten and his people to the right, toward the front door. As they went Marten saw a fire alarm box on the wall. Quickly he turned back. “Mário,” he called, “is there an alarm box near the ambulance bay?”

“In the corridor just inside it, why?”

“Just a thought, it’s nothing, sorry.” He glanced at Anne, their eyes met, and he turned back to his group. “Out the door fast and into the truck!”

11:49 A.M.